"How" To Meditate

The reason I have the word "how" in quotations is because I find meditation to be kind of like a baby learning to crawl and walk. How does a baby learn? It just innately has the urge to do it and keeps making attempts until walking becomes second nature. The same is true for me with meditation. I just keep at it and trying different things until eventually it became automatic. There are myriad techniques that are taught in different traditions. Sometimes people get very dogmatic and attached to their techniques and become very critical of other traditions and methods that seem to differ from theirs.

I have been guilty of this at different points in my journey. I would engage in very complicated processes and techniques, hoping to do it all "just right." I would argue with friends about the "right" way to go about this spiritual path. Success began when I started letting go of the complications and allowing myself to be simple and intuitively guided. When I sit down to meditate now, I start by kind of dropping into my breath. I don't try to influence or control it. I just stay with it in the body as it comes in and goes out. The breath is such a gentle constant, even though it is also constantly changing.

When I notice bodily tensions come up I intentionally relax them as gently as I can. I liken it to opening a closed fist that I didn't know was so tightly clenched. The breath tends to get deeper and longer by itself as I allow the body to open up and relax.

I have been very hung up on posture in terms of my meditation practice. I strenuously forced myself to sit in the full lotus position at different points in my journey. It took me many weeks of stretching to be able to sit that way for even a few minutes, and I felt I had achieved some kind of spiritual accomplishment. I believed that if I could sit that way long enough I would force myself to become fully enlightened. I didn't see that I was being very unkind and unloving to my body, trying to coerce it rather than taking a loving approach.

These days I experiment with different postures, depending on how my body feels. Sometimes it helps to have my feet flat on the ground to stay more connected to the Earth. This includes being barefoot on the Earth, which is very grounding. Sometimes I'll sit with my back against a tree which gives me a lot of comfort and stability, feeling anchored and rooted to Mother Earth.

I often would try to meditate myself "away" from the physical world and even my own body. Different people had told me I had been "spiritually bypassing." This is a term I had heard at different points and now I can see how it relates to my own path and my tendency to avoid myself at any cost.

Basically, I had been using meditation and spirituality in general as a means of avoiding my own humanity. I would try to jump into the Absolute reality and get the hell away from my complicated thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations as well as difficult relationships. I believed if I could hang out in a realm free of all this stuff and kind of float through life like a kite on a string.

At one point when I was 22 years old I achieved a profound state of detachment which I mistook for complete enlightenment. I felt free of my own unresolved traumas in the body, which brought a certain level of peace and happiness. I began offering spiritual teachings to people, and many of them seemed to resonate with what I was saying.

As I continued doing this I let up on my own spiritual practice and noticed a lot of old pain and thought patterns coming up. I tried doing my "bypass meditations" more and more, trying to leap away from all the painful sensations. Eventually I had to learn how to breathe more deeply into the body and heal all the stuff I had skipped over for so long. I'm grateful for those that called me on my errors at this time and helped me course correct.

I learned how to tune in deeper to my actual bodily experiences both while meditating and in daily activities. When there's difficult feelings that arise I let myself sort of relax into them rather than try to "jump away" from them into stories and fantasies, doing my best to buffer or numb out from discomfort.

I joked with a friend that I was a professional spiritual by-passer, having tried and exhausted every means of avoiding my own authentic healing process. She helped prompt me to really connect with myself and it motivated me to move forward in new and courageous ways.

I had been doing a lot of "fancy stuff" in meditation for most of my life. I experimented with telepathy, astral projection, romote viewing and even telekinesis. I didn't seem to have much success in developing these psychic abilities, because I was only turning to them to avoid my own emotions and bodily sensations. I felt like if I could develop my mind enough I could get away from all the painful parts of being human.

Interestingly enough, when I started really sitting and breathing into all the discomfort and contracted energy in my body, it allowed my third eye to open naturally while being grounded at the same time. Intuition opened up and flowed more easily in proportion to how heart-centred and honest I became about experiencing all the tough stuff I had skipped over in the past.

I would often lay down on my back to meditate, which can be effective at times. It lets the body relax a lot more deeply and hidden traumas and blockages can open up. When I sit up it makes it easier to stay more alert and focused, but it takes time to learn how to relax deeply in a seated posture. Walking meditation is interesting too, since it involves letting go of the notion of moving forward into a future and just intimitely being with the act of walking itself. Noticing the feeling of my feet during every step and letting my breath deepen into the body instead of always trying to "get there." When I walked without mindfullness, it was almost like I was trying to walk out of myself into my own imagination. I would almost be running trying to get to my destination, and my mind was moving even faster. I was straining at the bit like a wild horse, and its taken a lot of practice to reign that horse in and let it be my servant.

"How to Meditate?" I asked my guides this question one day. I had become fed up with all the techniques and processes, and I would switch and swap them out when I got tired of the limited results from any given teaching. One day I had the thought come in to just stay with my breath, as often as possible and no matter what was coming up in my mind and body.

I realized I would often hold my breath and tense up during meditation practice as though I was bracing myself against all the emotional landmines that were exploding within me every so often. I was giving into a trauma response, and by allowing the breath to naturally deepen it let these residual traumas drain from the body in a relaxed and loving way.

I'm able to observe and be with the breath at the entrance of my nostrils, in my lower abdomen, and even at the souls of my feet and up my legs. When I have emotional or physical pain I allow the breath to flow into it, which provides almost immediate relief and a loosening of the dense contracted sensations.

During 10 day Vipassana meditations we learned how to stay with the breath and observe sensations as they arise and cease without judgment, developing our awareness and equanimity. The tendency to react to unpleasant feelings with aversion and get rid of them can be quite strong in the beginning, as well as clinging to and craving for the pleasant sensations that arise and cease. I started seeing experientially in real-time how suffering was created through craving for pleasure and avoiding pain.

Sometimes I was able to stay with very painful phenomena for long periods of time without reacting to or judging anything. Likewise I could stay with pleasant feelings and enjoy them without the mind creating attachment and craving for "more". This had been the basis for my substance use and abuse, wanting to chase and keep pleasant sensations and chase away the dense and painful ones. Many people have used Vipassana and other meditation techniques to help them quit drugs and other harmful behaviors. Developing insight and getting to the root of the mind allows for natural and lasting behavioral transformation. The key for me is to be as loving as possible in this process rather than try to cojole or bully myself into meditating properly.

The reason I made such slow progress in my journey of mindful living and formal meditation practice is because I was in an almost constant fight with myself and the world around me. When I learned to slow down and be gentle with myself things started deepening on their own.

For example, when I had difficult feelings coming up it felt like my mind went on attack mode trying to get rid of the pain as soon as possible. This had a counterproductive effect, since I was dividing myself from my experience. When I learned how to lovingly soften into even the most challenging sensations, they started melting out of my reality without me even noticing. I just keep doing the practice of breathing, loving, and relaxing into What IS rather than trying to get to some idealized version of reality, which is actually simply a fantasy in my own imagination.

Waking up out of the imagination is actually a very profound thing to have happen. I didn't realize how thoughts and images in my consciousness seemed to get so much emphasis and "reality effect." Its like a child believing in Santa Claus. I keep believing my thoughts, and confirming the reality of something that is only imaginary to begin with. Spiritual teachers would tell me to just stick with the breath, or my body sensations since they are grounded in present moment reality. The seductive effect of the imagination kept drawing my attention back until I learned to just let the imagination come and go without imbuing it with so much importance.

Its interesting to really observe my experience as objectively as possible, and even learn to love myself amidst even the most painful thoughts and emotions. This has proven to be the answer to addictive patterning, since I would always reach for substances or other things as a pale substitute for my own loving attention. When I give myself the love that I withheld from myself for so long I no longer need to reach for external means of temporary comfort that only prolong my healing journey.

I hope people can derive something from my experiences that will make their journey towards the end of suffering that much simpler and easier. Self-Love has proven to be the cornerstone of my path, and I thank my main teacher Matt Kahn for inspiring me and letting me know that whatever happens, "I deserve more love, not less." <3